Your best "kick me hard" stories

At 16 I bought a 71 Olds 442 one owner in perfect condition with all original service receipts, trunk liner, window sticker and 42k mi for $1,600. At 20 I sold it for $14,000 to pay for college and thought I made out like a bandit...

One of my distant relatives passed away right as I turned 18. No one in the family wanted the old car that he kept under a cover in the garage. It was offered to me for $4,000. At the time I barely had gas money, and I knew almost nothing about cars, so I passed. Turned out to be a Duesenburg. I'm 99% sure it was a clone, but some nights I still wonder...

In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker:

The lake house would bother me more than the 250 GTO.

I was offered the chance to buy a Harley knuckehead in the late 80s for $500. I didn't buy it, because I didn't want to kill myself (and I probably would have, as I was 19 and had only ridden dirt bikes at the time). It would have been neat owning a piece of Americana like that, though.

I sold my GT-350H for $1500 (what I paid) during the first gas crunch.

Sold a 2200lb 550hp Kirkham . . . shall I go on?

In early '95 I had a spare (sorta) 5 grand laying about. My dad's best pal was making a tidy profit buying and selling Ferraris, and told us to look out for any 308 that ran for under 50 grand and he'd pony up half if we came up with the other half. We found one, I sank that 5k into that car, and lost our collective shirt on it cuz very shortly thereafter was when them Swiss fellers were found out to be trying to corner the market and it all fell apart. I was gonna put that money into Microsoft stock. Hardly a day goes by that I don't kick myself over that one...OTOH I did get to drive a Ferrari from Seattle to San Francisco with my old man so it aint' all bad.

Back in the late 70's I was offered a TR-3 for $100. It had been stored with no plugs in it and the engine was a little stiff. I turned it down. He sold it to a guy on Friday night and Sunday afternoon the guy drove it by the sellers house and waved.

914Driver wrote: "Can you hold it for a while for me?"

I had an opportunity to buy a molested Ford Cortina back in ott-ten. The Missus put the ky-bosch on the deal by dragging out our new housing purchase.

Houses are a better investment.

Hindsight being what it is, I would have done the 'Tina differently. Most regrets I blame myself for, the most recent I blame on someone else.

Dan

Late 1960s, I had a chance to buy an early AC Cobra for $6,000. As I was making $1.50 an hour tossing pizzas, and the insurance bill would have been about $4K a year, it just wasn't on.

Early 1980s, I had a chance to buy the same car, by now an old race car, for $30K, and passed as I already had a bunch of cars and no time to play with them.

Late 1990s watched the same car sell for $150,000.....gaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!

One of my old pit crew did something similar. Sold a full size convertible Chrysler with 440 sixpack for $1,000 back in the early 70s.......

I don't have many regrets, as I usually just buy all the cool stuff I find, but these three stand out in my memory. I passed on all of them for extremely stupid reasons:

-1986 CRX Si for $600: I was looking for my first car and my uncle's neighbor had one of these. It had about 100,000 miles on it, which I thought was too high. I also didn't want it because I couldn't drive a stick yet. It was really clean and all original too.

-1969 Buick Skylark Sport Wagon for $800: After I passed on the CRX, I bought a '64 Skylark off a guy who was really into Buicks. I paid $400 for it. It looked good, but the frame eventually rotted out. Not only did I pass up selling that car for $2000 to my dad's mechanic, but I passed up buying the above wagon because it was green. It had a freshly rebuilt Buick 350 and absolutely no rust. Dumb!

-1979 Olds Cutlass for $400: On the day I blew the tranny in my old 1987 Cougar XR7, fellow GRM forum member Pseudosport made a trip to our favorite junkyard at the time. It was owned by this really cool older guy and he knew us from going there all the time. I asked him if he had any AOD's around, and he didn't. He asked what was up, and I told him how I blew the tranny in my car that morning. He then shows us out to the yard, where there was a red 2-door 1979 Cutlass just sitting there. It was one of those "little old lady" cars, and you could tell. Whitewalls on Olds Ralleye III's, V8 power, decent red paint, and a red and white 2-tone interior. Clean as could be, and had only 85,000 miles. Even had all the original paperwork in the glove box. We drove it around the yard, and it ran great!

I passed on it because It had a bench seat and a column shift.

STUPID!!!

I almost did the same thing with my Trans Am. I smartened up and bought that literally just before some girl and her dad were going to buy it and give it a leopard skin interior makeover.

Okay, one more real estate one and I'm done: I was in contract to buy a condo in downtown Columbus for $85k, in an old commercial building that was rehabbed into condos called the Battleship Building. Cool steel gray cladding with rivets, it's iconic. Anyway, turns out the building is zoned commercial so I couldn't get a conforming mortgage and so my payments would be close to $1000/mo since it would be a shorter mortgage. I only made about $25k/year at that point and said no, let it go to the next buyer. It sold fast and I ended up buying the $70k house. Not even four years later I saw it had sold again, this time for $185k. Here I am 8 years later than that, and I'm struggling to sell the $70k house for $100k after spending $50k in upgrades. Kick kick kick.

Oh, Huntington Bank stocks were down to $1.07/share or so, I had $36k in the bank. I wanted to buy stock, my wife wanted a new house. We bought the house. Now we have two houses, two mortgage payments, and Huntington shares are at $6.75. Whimper.

It's not all down sides, of course, we're doing just fine. It's just hard not to look at "what could have been!"

dculberson wrote: I had the opportunity to purchase a house with 2-car detached garage and enormous block workshop built by my grandfather to work on semis for $90k. Got appraised, it only appraised at $75k. So I said no. Idiot! The appraiser was an idiot too. I ended up buying just a house, no garage, for $70k in the same neighborhood a couple years later. Sigh. I was young and dumb. (Now I'm old and dumb.)

When I was 20, a family friend died, and I could have had his little city house for $17k. I wanted to buy it, but it was not a very nice area, and my mom told me it would never be worth anything.

They were selling in the $100k range within a few years.

A few months ago, I could have had 130 acres bush with clearings, on a highway with 1 mile frontage on a river. I thought about it for 3 days, then made my offer. Somebody beat me to it by a few hours. It sold for $20k, then got flipped in a month for $52k

Snooze = lose.

John Brown wrote: My father had a friend named Dennis when I was in high school. I had already finished the Camaro and was almost done with the 4 door GTO (1966 Tempest 4 door post with a butt load of GTO parts on it). Dennis was notorious for his cars, Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Jaguar, etc. In his pole barn he had a 1965 Corvette rolling chassis, complete minus engine and transmission. I was told that if I mowed his lawn all summer I could have it. I said no thank you... His lawn was 15 acres and had a landing strip. It's not like I wouldn't be doing it with an industrial lawn tractor... Stoopid Mofo.

Wait, you finished a project?

Sorry, had to be done dude.

5 years ago I had a chance to buy an '88 E30 M3. Not perfect, but decent paint, all original panels. Bilsteins and H&R lowering springs, autopower rollbar. Guy wanted $5700.

I passed on it because of a mileage branded title, had a dent or two and the motor seemed weak.

He sold it on eBay the next week for $7500 and I couldn't touch one today in similar shape for $15000.

Argh!

1983 - 1964 DB5 superleggera - $2500 - all their, but needing a resto

1980 - AAR Cuda for $1000 - had the wrong intake, may have been the wrong engine

1977 - 67 E-type $1500 - no rust!

1986 - Ford SOHC engine for $2500

Ecstacy and agony????? my 66 Shelby GT-350-H (SFM6S-1299) I purchased for $1000(1976), but my mom made me sell it because it was too much power!!!! I got $1500

2nd ecstacy and agony... I owned a TRD Vixen S2 for all of 5 days before I slide it under a truck!!!!

1972 Hershey Antique Car Meet-

1957 BMW 507 for $5000 (or was it $3000? Does it matter?)

D'oh!

Same time frame but not at Hershey- '60-something Maserati Sebring -$2500

My one that got away - a 1973 BMW 2002, Sahara, Weber carb, full Korman suspension... He wanted something like $1600 for it. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of driving my '83 320i when I drove to Lime Rock to see it. Beginning with the drive home, the 320i suffered multiple simultaneous failures, resulting in me being unable to sell it to raise the money I needed for the '02. Even after he dropped his price to $1200.

Not me, but a guy I know- In the late 70's/ early 80's, he had the opportunity to buy a NICE Gullwing for $8,000. He thought long and hard about it, but decided against it, because he would have had to sell his (real) 427 Cobra to swing it. He says that because he still has the Cobra, he's not too torn up about it.

The 64 vette 327 350hp 4sp I was referred to sitting in an old widows barn.....it had seen better days but it was all there and no real issues other than needing cleaned up and running. I was forced to pass on it for $3500 due to losing my job at the time, car was sold a week later. The guy detailed it, rebuilt the carb and sold it last sept for $47000......:(

Passed up an early 70's Trans Am 455 SD for $2k. It had trunk rot...

An old MGB-GT racer for $600 that needed some work.

Not me but my late father.

In 1975 while outprocessing for retirement after 23 years in the Army and stationed in Germany he was offered a De Tomaso Pantera for $4500.

Also, due to the urgency of his outprocessing he had to abandon his Lotus Type 61 FF.

This was the lesson he learned. Even thou you are a Sergent Major, don't tell a full bird Colonel "not to get into a battle of wits with me, you'll only stand half a chance".

1968 was a double "kick me hard" year.

First my father died and my mother offered his 65 289 Mustang to me if I wanted it. Since I was living in another state and had no where to keep it I turned her down.

A few months later I got tired of my Alfa leaking oil all the time and traded it in on a SAAB 96.

16vCorey wrote: I haven't passed on many deals, which is why I have 12 or so cars, but I did pass on a '78 911 that had been sitting outside for a while, for $1,000. Also passed on two 911's as a package deal, a '73 and a '74 parts car, for $2,200.

wow am i in the same boat. i have a VERY hard time passing on deals. so im gonna post some deals.

1971 911T 2.2 RSR wide body, fuchs, whale tail etc. complete w/clean title $600

1988 e28 M5 180k one owner $3800 including a 1990 vw GTI (just sold him a volvo wagon actually)

74 dodge dart 60k two owner $400 plus trade

i missed a M6 for $2500 and a 383 cuda for $7000

passed on a 61 corvette fuelie for 25,000 a ten years ago. Only thing non-original was a chrome alternator bracket. Wife's cousin bought it. Sold it a couple years ago for 120,000

jhaas wrote:

16vCorey wrote:

1971 911T 2.2 RSR wide body, fuchs, whale tail etc. complete w/clean title $600

WHAT!?!??!!